Across the country, public defender offices are underfunded and understaffed, drowning in untenable caseloads. With too few, well-trained public defenders handling too many cases, poor people are being denied their fundamental right to counsel and many are languishing in jail at the taxpayer’s expense. The American Bar Association has concluded that the situation has resulted in “a system that lacks fundamental fairness and places poor persons at constant risk of wrongful convictions.”

Equal Justice Works is developing a solution that will create a culture change in indigent defense and dramatically increase the caliber of lawyers working to secure better outcomes for clients and communities. This national, three-year legal fellowship program that will recruit, train and support top law school graduates to work as public defenders in underserved areas. The program will focus on both juvenile justice and adult indigent defense and will improve the quality of representation; work to reduce caseloads nationwide; and seed the field with future indigent defense leaders.

Equal Justice Works has enlisted the Southern Public Defender Training Center as our primary partner in this program to provide specialized training in trial advocacy skills and leadership training to build a long-term commitment to indigent defense. The National Legal Aid & Defender Association, National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, the Constitution Project, and the National Juvenile Defender Center are also supporting this initiative.

On May 7, 2010, Equal Justice Works will hold a convening of approximately 40 national leaders in the indigent defense community to discuss the launching Equal Justice Corps and to help us design next steps.

This initiative is currently in the development stage so we are not yet accepting fellowship applications. Please check back regularly for updated information.

To learn more about the crisis in indigent defense and Equal Justice Works proposed solution, download the Executive Summary or our whitepaper.

Defenders - for information on how you can become involved and support this initiative, please contact Cait Clarke, Director of Public Interest Law Opportunities.

Other Resources:

• American Bar Association’s Ten Principles of an Indigent Defense Delivery System
• American Council of Chief Defenders and the National Juvenile Defender Center’s Ten Core Principles for Providing Quality Delinquency Representation Through Indigent Defense Delivery Systems

To explore this unique fellowship model, Equal Justice Works has received generous planning grant funding from the Institute of International Education, the Open Society Institute, Public Welfare Foundation, the Wallace Globe Fund, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, and an anonymous donor.